Wednesday, 18 July 2012

London and the Census

Posted by Prof Ian Gordon, SERC and LSE

What the first snippets of data from the 2011 Census show
is that since the Millennium London’s population has been growing about as fast
as Mayoral Plans have imagined – but without much of the extra housing intended
to accommodate it.

It’s happened despite this for two basic reasons.
One is that newly arrived migrants from poorer countries have been
packed in at higher densities. The other is that the traditional route for
established Londoners to acquire more living space - moving out to buy houses
in more affordable areas outside London - has got increasingly choked off.
First supposedly ‘pro-city’ policies empowered NIMBYs to resist land release for housing in the South
East - and then the banking crisis closed
affordable finance to first time buyers.

It’s dangerous to draw more than the simplest conclusions
from the Census’s first ‘headline’ growth figures for London. But it is clear that the
way in which this growth has been accommodated over the last ten years is not a
sustainable one. It is time to
drop the complacent claim that London can (or will) house all ‘its own’
population growth, and get back to planning how the wider economic region can
provide decent housing for its dynamic population.

A version of this post first appeared in the Evening Standard letters page, July 17th 2012.

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